In the chap­ter, the pro­tag­o­nist grap­ples with a crit­i­cal deci­sion after a night of reflec­tion. He con­sid­ers sail­ing south­west to Duluth, where famil­iar faces and poten­tial aid await him, par­tic­u­lar­ly his com­pan­ion Lark, who has her own con­nec­tions from her time at the library. How­ev­er, he also weighs the risks of involv­ing oth­ers in his trou­bles. With the morn­ing calm and beau­ti­ful weath­er, he feels a surge of hope, believ­ing he can reach the Slates and per­haps reunite with Lark, invok­ing thoughts of their shared past and the safe har­bor they once nav­i­gat­ed togeth­er.

As he sails, hard-earned expe­ri­ence leads him to make instinc­tu­al choic­es, guid­ed by the land­scape. The jour­ney pro­ceeds smooth­ly, pre­sent­ing a stark con­trast to his dire expec­ta­tions while reflect­ing on his trusty boat, Flower. The sur­round­ings evoke nos­tal­gia and con­nec­tion, and he begins to feel sen­ti­men­tal about Flow­er’s stead­fast­ness. Each mile unveils the beau­ty and dan­ger of the lake, as mem­o­ries of Lark haunt him with long­ing. Yet, moments of loss seep in, par­tic­u­lar­ly when he per­ceives Lark’s face in the land­scape, an ephemer­al vision that van­ish­es as quick­ly as it appears.

Anchored for the night near Thun­der Bay, the pro­tag­o­nist’s hunger pricks at him, but he fights it off with thoughts of past hard­ships and the absurd rit­u­als of those seek­ing belong­ing. Strum­ming his bass gui­tar pro­vides tem­po­rary solace under the moon­light until a series of knocks against the hull shock him into alert­ness. Ini­tial­ly think­ing it to be his seag­ull friends, he emerges to find a corpse drift­ing near­by, an unset­tling reminder of mor­tal­i­ty and the macabre his­to­ry that haunts the Great Lakes.

As the night unfolds, the fig­ure embod­ies both dread and a ter­ri­fy­ing curios­i­ty. His past encoun­ters with the dead give way to mixed emo­tions. Instead of suc­cumb­ing to pan­ic, he push­es the corpse away, sym­bol­iz­ing his attempt to dis­tance him­self from the hor­rors of the past. Yet the pres­ence of the drowned weighs heav­i­ly on his mind as sleep eludes him. Even­tu­al­ly, he greets dawn with a new resolve, cast­ing off from the chill­ing encounter, leav­ing the haunt­ing fig­ure behind as he steers towards what­ev­er awaits him fur­ther along the jour­ney.